


The Downward Spiral

by EgoDominusTuus



Series: A Darker Kind of Survival [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3, Fallout 4, Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Aftercare, Again, Angst, Collars, Dom/sub, Fighting, M/M, Mentions of Rape, Not a Happy Story, Past Abuse, Past Relationship(s), Porn with Feelings, Power Dynamics, Psychological Trauma, Rape, Rough Sex, Self-Hatred, Tender Sex, Trauma, Violent Sex, collaring, m/m - Freeform, mention of trauma, mentions of abuse, relationship dynamics, this is not a happy story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:20:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26670538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EgoDominusTuus/pseuds/EgoDominusTuus
Summary: Quinn lost everything. The only way to feel anything now is to hurt.--Where the author started MilWordy, thought she'd write a shortfic about two of her sole survivor characters... and ended up with a 22k monster.
Relationships: Male Sole Survivor/Raider Characters, Quinn/Salem
Series: A Darker Kind of Survival [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1940737
Kudos: 14
Collections: The Sun in a Jar





	1. Everyone I Know Goes Away

**Author's Note:**

> Guys, seirously xD I wrote this for myself more than anything else because I got an idea while listening to Nine Inch Nails. This is a lot of pain and angst and self-indulgent sex scenes. 
> 
> You have been warned.
> 
> Also, if haven't read both Quinn and Salem's backstories, I plopped them as parts 2 and 3 in this 'series'. Enjoy!

**\---Salem**

“You can’t shoot down Vertibirds, Quinn.” The voice was a sharp bark, angry and pained all at once, “Elder Maxson will--”

“He’s not your Elder anymore, Danse!” The response was just as sharp, but it was smooth like silk and full of absolute rage. I hung back, letting the water on my skin from my swim over dry in the hot Commonwealth sun. I’d intended to just come in with my ax swinging, but I’d stepped in on a conversation, an argument, and I had to say that I was a little intrigued by the fire that I heard in the voice from the man called Quinn.

“Of course he is, just because--”

“Because he tried to kill you--”

“Because of the unfortunate state of what I am--”

“Because he sent _me_ to kill you--”

“That doesn’t mean that I’m any less loyal--”

“To the person who would rather see you dead than thriving, and who can’t see--”

“I am still a soldier of the Brotherhood of Steel, and--”

“You’re being unreasonable. I shot them down because they were coming after _you._ ” That silky voice was snarling now, shouting, angry. I couldn’t tell for certain, but I had a feeling that it was because the thick-headed Brotherhood of Steel tin-can was being an idiot.

“You’re a member of the Brotherhood of Steel, too. You can’t defy your Elder!” Punctuated. Shouting.

“He’s **not** my **Elder** ! I am _not a member of that fucked up crew!_ ” A snarl.

“Then why are you with me?” Cold. That voice was suddenly cold. Removed from the situation, resigned. Far away.

“Danse…”

“No. Go. Just go.”

“Danse!” His voice more urgent now.

“You have no loyalty to your squad, no loyalty to your convictions. It’s no wonder people die around you.” Even as he said it, I could hear the regret in his words. But they were out in the open now, and there was nothing that he could do to take them back.

“Danse…” Pain. So much pain. And then. “Fine… get the fuck inside when the Vertibirds come, because they’ll kill you, Danse. They hate you.” And then hard footfalls and a man who was stomping away from a relationship that had clearly broken.

And then I saw him.

Green eyes, like a fucking devil. Hard lines and a sharp jaw and scars littered across a face that had dark hair spilling into it. Disheveled. In pain.

But his eyes were cold, and there wasn’t a glisten of tears. Just… agony. He was lean, and shorter, tan and gorgeous with full lips that were in a frown and fingers that were reaching for a pistol like it was a comfort toy.

He got a few feet away from the tin-can before he started running.

And I could have killed him then; I could have cut him down… but I followed; his fury was like a siren, and I had to heed its call.

\---

He was covered in blood. From neck to torso, and not all of it was the enemies. I’d personally watched a knife run him through -- he’d taken a bullet. But he was walking like he couldn’t feel it, and he stepped over the last Brotherhood of Steel asshole who had attacked him and pointed his pistol at their head. “You need to fucking listen to me. Tell this to your goddamn _Elder._ ” He leaned down and placed the pistol under the man’s chin. “If he goes after him again, I’ll come up there and gut him myself. Do you understand?”

“Quinn, you… we--”

“ **Do you understand**?” 

The pistol shot rang out, and the man screamed -- but he’d just shot him in the arm. 

The other five weren’t so lucky. He’d shot, he’d cut, he’d run into them with a wild abandon and ferocity that I’d never seen, with a fury that made my cock hard and my body tingle in delight. There was something about him -- I understood the appeal. He was fury and rage spilled into that smaller package, and when he was cutting those men down, there was nothing human in his eyes. That was where he made up for the tears that had wanted to fall earlier.

In anger.

In death.

In violence and cold fury that I’d never witness another person have before.

I licked my lips as an undeniable hunger welled inside of me.

“If you don’t tell him, I’ll make sure it’s more than a bullet wound, soldier.” Quinn’s voice was steely, and he pushed off of the ground and stalked away. His shoulders were trembling, his body saturated in blood… and he jerked his wrist up -- a beautiful icy blue light confused me for a moment until I realized that it was a Pipboy. He flicked the dials in irritation until a song tuned in over the radio. He took out a stimpak without looking and stabbed it into his thigh -- he didn’t wince at that, either. It was like he couldn’t feel the pain, or like he just didn’t care. He wasn’t normal. 

Those eyes slid from cold fury to curious interest as the music blurted out lyrics.

_What if there was a place with all the zip of Nuka Cola? Wouldn’t that be the cheer-cheer-cheeriest place in all the world?_

His green eyes widened, and he listened.

And I listened.

And I knew where we were going.

\---

He cut his way through the Commonwealth like he meant to leave a permanent scar behind, so they would never forget that he’d been there. There was a focused rage and pain in every single thing that he did, but I watched him repeatedly go out of his way to find trouble -- by the time that he made it to the train station that would lead him to NukaWorld, he was cut and shot, beat and broken, and I wondered how he was standing at all. 

I’d silently followed him, still unsure of what I was going to do. It wasn’t like me to stalk a person, and I would have made my presence known earlier if it wasn’t such a fucking pleasure to watch him let out his anger on anything and everything that he came across; gunners, raiders, men, and ghouls alike. Deathclaws didn’t even stand a chance.

He had nothing inside of him that seemed to hold an ounce of pity. With every kill, the hurt that had crept back into his eyes from what had transpired earlier melted into the background. Warm spring to cool and frozen winter. His eyes kept switching back and forth, and I couldn’t help but to watch.

But now… now, I couldn’t stay in the shadows, because there was an entire group of hostiles at the station, some in power armor, and Quinn was swaying on his feet like a man who had literally been in motion for the past forty-eight hours and lost more blood than he’d had any right to.

If I wanted to keep watching him, if I wanted to fuck and claim him, I was going to have to come out of hiding and do something about it. 

**\---Quinn**

I hurt all over. Everything inside of me was this raging storm that I couldn’t seem to reel in… and every time I tried, it hurt again, so I had to let it loose. I knew if I stopped killing long enough to actually feel, it was going to break something inside of me. I wouldn’t recover this time. I barely had the last time. 

I’d lost Silas.

I’d lost Nora.

And now… I’d lost Danse.

There was _nothing_ for me. Nothing and no one, and it seemed that the reason that I lost everyone over and over again was because of some fucking _army_ and some demand of _decorum_ and because I was so busy being so _good._

I was tired of being good.

I wanted to be bad.

In one ear, I had Danse screaming at me -- the memory of him, now -- because I was cutting through the Commonwealth like a storm.

In the other ear, I had the soft, tiny, distant voice of Silas King, pleading with me to be careful, begging me to take a moment and calm down and remember _who I really was. Because this wasn’t me. This wasn’t me, and I wasn’t broken yet, and I could still turn back before it was too late and I lost everything that I’d ever been._ _~~Quinn please, just stop. Iloveyou.~~ _

Sil’s voice broke my heart, and whatever was left of my sanity at the moment. Danse’s reminded me of what I couldn’t have anymore, and what I was stupid enough to think I could find again. Tears threatened to sting -- I refused -- and I pushed them both to the side to listen to screams of the people I killed instead. 

That was easier.

_~~But not better for you, Quinn… not better. Please…~~ _

That small voice was slipping away. Maybe from how violent I was being. Maybe from my blood loss. Whatever it was, he was going, and I was breaking, and I just wanted to get to NukaWorld and start _over._

Of course, it didn’t help that there was another group of Gunners at the railway to get to NukaWorld -- Sil and I had talked about going here. No.

_No._

I lifted my pistol and ran at them with eyes blind to the fact that they outnumbered me, outgunned me-- I was always those things. I’d just always had backup before; someone to watch my six. But they were all gone now.

It didn’t matter.

And it didn’t matter that I was losing, because if I died, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad, either. But then there was a shout of pure, visceral strength. A man -- a tall, broad, tattooed man with an ax. Swinging. And screaming and fighting -- but not me.

He was a raider. That was obvious. But he was fighting the others. I hesitated for only a moment and then felt my energy instantly lift up to match his own. He was left, I was right.

_We killed them all._

I realized at some point that I took another shot, another stab -- that my face had been cut. But it was only after we were finished that I turned, swaying on my feet, and looked at him.

“Who are--” he stepped forward, soaked in blood. He looked just like me. 

And then I fainted.

**_\---_ ** **Salem**

He was closer to dying than I would have liked, but there was this savage joy when we were fighting together that I couldn’t deny. I didn’t have to worry about my back, because as soon as we began, I knew that he was going to handle everything on that side. I wanted him for that viciousness alone. I wanted him because I’d never seen anyone who didn’t care so much, could kill so efficiently, and still managed to look so good. The wound that bisected his brow and would leave a scar was only going to make him more handsome. 

I caught him when he fainted, and I pulled him into the nearest building. I wanted to get to NukaWorld, but I was going to have to at least tend to his bleeding first. I tore strips from the light grey shirt that he wore, and when I lifted the material I saw even more scars along his stomach, his chest, everywhere.

He’d been through more pain than most people had a right to live through.

“Who are you?” I murmured the words quietly to myself, wrapping his wounds and stabbing him with a stimpak. My fingers itched for a collar; I wanted to put it around his neck now, but it wasn’t time for that yet -- he didn’t deserve it yet; he wasn’t _mine_. I licked my lips at the thought -- it was who I was. I saw something that I wanted.

I was going to take it.

And he seemed just self-destructive as to let me. 

It was another ten minutes before his thick lashes fluttered open -- even before they’d lifted, his fingers moved for the pistol I was now carefully turning in my hand -- it was a model that I’d seen before, but there was a newness to it that made no sense; like it had been carefully tucked away somewhere safe when the world had exploded, and he’d found it, nice and pristine.

When he realized that the pistol was gone, his fingers flew for another that I’d taken off of him, and then another that I’d found. I was shocked, however, when he pulled out a fourth and leveled it at me.

“Who are you?”

I grunted, “Is that any way to treat someone who saved your life?”

“Who are you?” He snapped it out again, sitting up, realizing he was shirtless and frowning again. His eyes flickered to his bandaged wounds, and only then did he slightly lower the pistol, though it stayed pointed in my direction.

“I’m Salem.”

“You’re a raider.”

“And what are you, cutting through the Commonwealth like you meant to tear it apart?” I laughed at him, and he seemed to balk for a moment. A frown flicked his pretty lips, and he sat back with a small grunt. Something about him was changing; the longer the fire from the fighting had to quell behind his eyes, the more whatever hurt he was masking came swimming to the surface. He seemed ready to waver back to the side of violence at my behest, if only to shove it down again.

“Were you watching me?” Accusation, the gun aimed in my direction, but he didn’t have his finger on the trigger. I could have rushed him, overwhelmed him, and I was almost positive I would have won.

“We happened to be going in the same direction.” I shrugged; he didn’t need to know that I had, in fact, been watching him since his little spat. That I knew how ragged his wounds were and how easy it would be for me to fill all of his hurt spots with something else. 

Quinn looked at me for a moment like he wanted to question what I was saying, like he wanted to just pull the trigger. But something seemed to stop him. The gun slowly lowered, and he looked me up and down again -- I knew I was a specimen, that I was desirable. I didn’t have a lot of charisma, but I made up for that in sheer brute presence.

“You’re going to NukaWorld?” He asked softly.

“Yeah, I am.”

“You’re going to take it, aren’t you?” 

“Yeah, I am.”

“No.” He cut me off. “ _We_ are.”

The curl of the smile on my lips was more than enough to let him know that that was exactly what I’d wanted to hear. 

**\---Quinn**

He was trouble. For a moment, I thought about killing him, because I _knew_ that he was trouble. Even as my eyes roamed over his body and saw that he was one of the more physically pleasing people that I’d seen in quite some time.

He was going to kill someone -- a lot of someones. He wasn’t good.

He was bad.

And that was what made me put my gun down. The voices in my head were still screaming, but I made my mind up at that moment. I’d follow him, and I’d happily get lost in whatever he was doing, if it meant that I didn’t have to feel what I was feeling right now. It was stupid of me, and I knew it. 

But he was a raider, and he sure didn’t seem to give a shit about what was going on in the world around him, other than getting to NukaWorld and taking it over. Even after, I wasn’t sure if he was going to try to fight me or fuck me. 

Either sounded like a good idea to me, honestly. Both would give me what I wanted -- a balm to sooth the pain inside of me. Something to numb me to the emotions that kept threatening to surface and take me over. 

We made our way to the train station, and Salem’s ax landed on the head of a man who tried to reach out to us before I’d even had the chance to ask him if he knew anything. My finger twitched for a moment, wanting to go to my gun, wanting to go back to my baser instincts and take-out-the-raider, but I put my hands behind my back, watched him rifle through the man’s pockets and come up with a way to get the train moving.

He looked back at me, with fresh blood spattered up along the black paint on his face, crimson painting his lips and making his eyes burn -- I let my reservations go. I stepped forward and stretched my hand up; my fingers didn’t tremble when I wiped the blood away. He caught my wrist in a quick motion, and for a moment I thought he was going to break it. I looked up at him with wide, earnest eyes… and then recoiled slightly when he twisted my hand back to my own face; it was smeared red with blood and black with his paint, and he streamed it over my eyes and then hummed in satisfaction.

“That’s better.” 

I could see myself in the reflection of the train window -- raider paint. Bandaged. Disheveled. Standing in Salem’s shadow. 

Something inside of me knotted tighter, and I leaned into him while my insides trembled, while that voice in my head tried to scream one last time. 

“Let’s go,” I spoke softly. A request. We couldn’t do anything here; it was too open and exposed. We needed to keep moving. Because I wanted…

I wanted… 

Something. Anything. I wanted to fill the ragged, aching hole in my chest because I wasn’t filling it with rage anymore. But he was a walking epitome of rage; maybe he could do the job. 

He knew. And I knew. I think we were both aware of the fact that I was filling something empty inside of me with his presence, that we were aware of the fact that this was culminating to something that it shouldn’t have been. I had always been a person to follow my gut; I didn’t have some wait time before I entered into relationships -- I was a creature of base instinct. It was all or nothing with me.

And now it was all.

Because I had nothing else. 

\--- **Salem**

The fire that had been burning in his eyes when he was fighting went out while we were sitting on the train to NukaWorld -- I had to be alert, or I might have tried to spark it again. There was something about him that was so interesting, because there was something about him that was so broken. I could tell that he was sitting in front of me like molding clay, and how he kept glancing at me told me it wouldn’t be hard for me to make my mark so he wouldn’t be able to get away.

It intrigued me -- what had happened? He was a wildfire that had torched the ground he walked on, and now he was just… empty.

Did that mean I could fill him up with some of my energy? The thought made things in my gut clench. If I could make him like me, in tandem with how he fought, how the thrill of blood obviously burned through him, he would be perfect.

My _perfect_ match.

I wanted him now more than ever. It almost didn’t matter that we were on a train to a location that I knew nothing about, that I didn’t even know when we’d get there. I wanted to fuck him right on the floor, to claim him now before someone saw what he was seeing and tried to take him.

I’d kill anyone who even thought about it.

The possessiveness that I usually saved for someone that I’d already collared was flaring now, tempting me to make a move. I actually stood and started towards him; he looked up at me with passive green eyes that were neither protesting nor stopping me -- he opened his mouth to speak… and then we pulled into the station.

“Hm.” He blinked once, long and slow like he was surfacing from some deep pool. The moment of something happening was lost, because his keen ears picked up on the sound of fighting in the distance. 

“Come on. Let’s go.”

\---

We were both covered in blood; it had been a trap. Of course, it had been a trap -- we’d gone through a god damn gauntlet of traps and raiders. What surprised and impressed me was the fact that Quinn seemed to see them all. He moved with a deftness that was almost eloquent, disarming the frags that even I didn’t see. We made it through with a careful ease and finally got to some dumbass in power armor.

Some cock named Gage told us to use a water gun. I charged in with a rush, legs pumping -- I jumped on the back of his damn suit before he had a chance to realize what was going on, and ripped his fucking helmet off while a jolt of electricity shot through me and made my head spin. Quinn came behind me like my shadow, putting five quick bullets into the asshole's head and leaving us both spattered in fluid.

My stomach twisted at the grace of it -- we worked like we were a unit, one person, killing anything in our path without having to discuss it first. I’d trusted that he would follow me, and he had. 

When we met the man named Gage, Quinn leveled his gun carefully at him… and it was only through careful and slick-talking that he didn’t suffer the same fate as the man named Colter. Unite the raiders. Be the Overboss… well, Overbosses. Take over NukaWorld.

Quinn instantly wanted to dive into it, like he hadn’t been a non-stop flurry of motion for days on end -- we cleared an entire park zone; blood and guts and ghouls and everything in between, and he moved like a killing machine the entire time. He worked like it was the last thing that he had left to him, shooting, and when he ran out of bullets, he seized a machete and started hacking. When I moved, he moved -- we were a well-oiled machine that made quick work of it.

My entire body was burning for him when he headed back; I knew that we were going to go to Fizztop Grille, and that we would be alone.

I just had to pace myself to wait that long.

“Man, you two sure work well together. You army or something?” Gage asked, his voice a drawl.

“No.” Quinn snapped his answer out sharply, punching the button for the elevator. He didn’t raise his eyes from the ground in front of us -- he’d been losing focus since the bloodshed had stopped. His adrenaline was fading, and whatever it was inside of him that he was running from seemed to be trying to claw its way to the surface.

“But you are together.” He looked between us with careful calculation, and then added, “Must be real love to fight like that.” Gage seemed amused.

Quinn’s eyes went glassy and blank at the word _love_. 

“Fuck you, Gage.”

The elevator came, and we went up. I had full intentions of pinning him to the wall as soon as we made our way to the top, but I didn’t get the chance. Before we’d even cleared the platform, he pulled me by the straps on my chest and brought my mouth down to his -- only then did he let out a sound, a wild, whimpering near scream of pain and need. When he pulled back, that glassy look was still there, but behind it his eyes were burning.

“Fuck me.” He gasped the words out, a pant, as close to a cry as I’d seen from him. We were covered in blood and death, and he was pulling the straps off of my chest before I even had a chance to say yes or no. “As hard as you can. However you want. Fuck me, just… fuck.” Pain, again. “Make me forget everything else. You can do that, can’t you.”

It wasn’t a question, and I wasn’t going to argue. My hand came up, fingers wrapping tight around his throat -- it cut off his next whimper and I lifted him the few inches that it took for our mouths to meet again. He gasped as well as he could against my hold, his tongue a hungry, greedy, needy thing as he leaned in to wrap his arms around me, and then wrap his legs around my waist as I walked us over to the nearest thing that I saw -- a bed on a platform.

Perfect. I threw him by my grip on his throat, and he landed, bounced, but didn’t get a chance to get up before I was on him, pinning him down against the sheets, twisting his hands up above his head and bringing my lips to his again. He whimpered and moaned into my mouth at the touch, raising up like he wanted to melt into my body, and I jerked back quickly. My oceanic eyes narrowed, and I looked him over for just a moment; I let my hips buck down against his, gyrating against the hardness that I felt there.

“You wanna be mine?”

He paused, pain -- need -- everything. “Yes. Just… fuck.”

“No,” I leaned down, kissing him again, with teeth and tongue until I drew blood. My mouth trailed from his lips to his throat, biting my way along. He whimpered again, body one hard line of trembling _want_. “Tell me you want to be mine.” 

He squirmed then, and I could almost feel it radiating off of him; how much he needed this, how much he needed to be fucked senseless. How much he needed somewhere to feel like he belonged, if only for a moment. 

My hand stretched between us, diving down the front of his pants and gripping his cock firmly. At the same moment, my teeth set against his neck, between shoulder and throat. I bit down hard enough to mark, and he screamed.

“Yes. Fuck, okay. I want to be yours. Just… please.” He was panting now, “Please?”

I had _never_ heard someone talk like they needed me as much as Quinn. I knew it wasn’t me -- it was my strength, my darkness, my ability to fill up whatever kept making his eyes go glassy.

Lucky for him, I didn’t give a fuck what it was. 

I stretched my hands to my belt, pulling a collar off. It was one I was particularly fond of -- dark black metal. It clapped around his neck before he had a chance to stop me, and then I twisted my fist into it and jerked him up to me again, crushing our mouths together and pulling him into an upright position so I could rip his clothing off of his body; he wouldn’t need them anymore. He was going to dress like a raider now. 

My raider.

Mine. 

My knife shredded what my fingers couldn’t jerk away, and only after he was nude and littered in the tatters of the clothing that were all that was left of who he used to be did I let him lay back. I straddled his hips and looked him over as I stripped carefully from my own clothing. His eyes were still wide, glassy, face flush, lips parted -- but I didn’t make him wait for long.

I didn’t have the patience for it. I came at him like a wild thing, shifting his hips and throwing his legs over my shoulders.

“As hard as I want, hm?” I chuckled darkly. Blood slicked my body, so it wasn’t as though I were going in dry. 

He looked like he wanted to look away for a moment, but he kept his eyes wide and focused on my face. “I can take it.”

“We’ll see.” I didn’t give him any other warning before I thrust my hips against the resistance of his ass. There was a moment where I thought I’d broken him -- he screamed a moan out, but his hands were flying for me, trying to pull me closer, trying to pull his body up to meet mine. He caught the rhythm of my hips without hesitation and then let his head fall back against the pillow and finally closed those pained eyes as I filled him and made him _forget_. 

\--- **Quinn**

It hurt. God, it hurt. Everything inside of me felt like it was tearing apart from the moment that Gage had uttered the word _love_.

I didn’t have Danse.

I didn’t have Silas.

I didn’t _want_ love, and just the thought of it took away the high from the killing and bloodshed that had left me worn out enough that I was hoping I’d sleep.

But no… it hurt, and there was only one more thing that I could do to make it stop. 

Somehow, when I’d first seen Salem, I’d known it would come to this. I didn’t think it would be quite this soon, but it was. 

He was there, and I was hurting. I begged -- I didn’t have pride to stop me in that moment -- and he was only too happy to oblige.

“No, tell me you want to be mine.” My mind was burning, too far gone with the pain and need that I had nothing left in me to argue anymore, to tell him that I couldn’t be anyone’s because I was too fucking broken and I didn’t have pieces left to give.

“Yes. Fuck, okay. I want to be yours. Just… please.” Agony poured through me, tears threatening my gaze and making it all the worse, “Please?”

I didn’t realize what was happening immediately, but I felt it when the cool metal of the collar clicked around my neck. Something in my chest followed; closing off. Snapping off. Broken forever and replaced with the hardness of that steel. 

I really was his. And in the wash of that knowledge, for at least a moment, all of the screaming in my head gave pause. Stopped. Silenced in the wake of his presence there.

“As hard as I want, hm?” For just a moment, shame at what I was doing threatened to spill to the surface. Sil and Danse’s voices tried to claw back up. I didn’t let them. I didn’t look away. I looked at his face, all storming eyes and dark lines and sheer sexual brutality.

“I can take it.” I croaked the words out, sure that I would be able to, because there was nothing that he could do that would hurt me worse than I was hurting myself. 

“We’ll see.” And he moved then -- hard and fast and straight through me with such physical force and demand that my mind filled with only the thought of him. 

For just a moment, everything else stripped away, and I felt _peace_. I knew that it wasn’t real, that it was just the physical force of what equated to a tsunami trapped in a human body, ripping through me and claiming me… but I’d take it. I felt more alive and instantly more numb to all the pain that had been ripping through me since I woke up in the Vault without Silas than I had since that damned moment. 

His hand never let go of the collar that he put around my neck. He jerked me back with it, extending me so the muscles on my chest stretched and my body opened up for him in ways it hadn’t for Danse, because Danse never could have been this rough. I whimpered a moan out, some semblance of his name, and he kept thrusting and bucking as though he had no intention of stopping, no lack of stamina to keep him from pounding into me all night. He pulled me back even further, arching my body completely so he could duck his head and catch my mouth again and kissed me hard, biting my tongue like he meant to swallow down my utterances of his name. Salem thrust again, and again, and then brought his free hand in between us to pump viciously at my cock until I was writhing beneath him and incapable of stopping the scream that poured into his mouth.

He drank it down like a fine wine and smiled in triumph against my lips as I came. 

I thought he would change his pace then, turn to bucking his hips to find his own pleasure… but he didn’t stop -- it was a steady, hard, pounding pace that made my body scream at the fact that I had no more liquid to give, no more pleasure to spill out. Instead, my body tensed again, and I closed my eyes at the sensation.

“No.” Salem jerked on my collar, his words a demand, “Look at me.” So I did, my eyes springing open, watching as he worked, letting him see it when the pleasure ripped through me again, pumping another climax, and then another -- until my body felt raw and used and I could barely breathe, and only then, when I was whimpering and near too weak to call out his name, too hoarse from screaming my pleasure to say a damn word, did he finally angle his hips, and thrust harder; it only took him a few moments. He shivered, his head thrown back, his body one long, hard line of muscle and blood and my cum…

And then he came, burying himself deep inside of me, sinking his seed so far that I felt like it was filling me to the brim.

Without a word, he put my legs down and fell atop me. He rolled over, pulling me onto his chest, and then for all the seeming of the world, he went to sleep. 

I was so full of pleasure, so light-headed and barely able to breathe between my sore muscles, my wounds, my aching body, and the pain that still threatened to claw at the edges. But it had been blocked in the moment by the raider beneath me who still had his hand wrapped into the length of the collar, biting into my skin.

It was enough -- for now, it would have to be enough.

I laid down against his chest to the smell of sweat and sex and blood and death, and I listened to the strong, thrumming beat of his heart until I fell asleep.

Only a small part of me was pretending I was somewhere else.


	2. Upon My Liar's Chair

\--- **Salem**

He was everything I expected and more. There was something about Quinn that was enigmatic. For a few days, he was shut down -- all that he wanted to do was fuck and fight and nothing in between. But then, one day, he smiled. It was a soft thing, but it changed his entire face. It lit him up from the inside out, and almost as though he caught himself doing it, he stopped and shut down again. He didn’t try to remove his collar.

He just walked beside me, and we killed. We were one when we were fighting, and there were no lines between us when I fucked him… but whoever he was only came through in small cracks and glimpses, and I found myself drawn to him -- it was curiosity more than anything else. He was more skilled than anyone I’d seen, capable of clearing out entire waves of ghouls or mechs without so much as a blink. He was durable as hell -- he got at least ten fresh scars while we were fighting. 

And there was a cold precision to him that spoke the word ‘monster’, and made me fuck him all the harder whenever I had the chance; sometimes I couldn’t wait until we got back to Fizztop, and I’d push him into a wall and fuck him then and there with our clothes hanging off of our bodies and the snarling sound of enemies approaching. There was a time when he’d actually taken his fucking pistol out and shot a group of ghouls without me so much as having to break the stride of my hips.

He was amazing.

But there was something missing from him.

That smile was what really told me as much. I’d just made an off-colored joke about the ghouls dressed up like clowns in the kiddie park, and he’d laughed. Small, the quirk of his lips.

And then it was gone.

And I realized I craved more. I wanted to see him laugh and smile and come in to whoever he had been, even if it was just because I needed to prove to myself that whatever he’d had before, I was better.

I was the best thing that there was, and as long as he was a broken fuck-toy, he wasn’t believing that himself.

But my plan in and of itself worked; he took on my cool and cavalier attitude. When one of the raider groups stepped out of line, he was the first to step up and aim his pistol. There was a precision and calculation to every move that he made that made me rock hard every time I saw it.

But that smile lingered in my mind.

We were in Fizztop Grille, and he’d already stripped out of the vest he’d picked up off of one of the raider gangs. It showed his bare arms, the cool line of his neck where his collar rested. 

He pulled it off with a small grunt, exposing new wounds and his muscled, bare torso. He’d started to kick off his boots when I came up behind him; he froze like a radstag caught in a floodlight, his body already melting back against mine, plying and willing for the reprieve from thought my fucking seemed to give him.

I had other plans.

“Quinn?”

“Hm?” He didn’t turn to look at me, continued kicking off his shoes, stood in the circle of my arms waiting for whatever order I gave him. He seemed to like it the most when I told him exactly what to do, exactly what I wanted -- like it gave him the ability to leave his mind altogether. To be somewhere else.

To be someone else.

Tonight, I wanted _him._

\--- **Quinn**

“Quinn?” And his voice was so serious when he said my name again. I froze for a second; there was something more than just sexual desire there, I could hear it. My eyes narrowed -- there were complications in how he said my name… because for a time, I hadn’t been Quinn at all.

I’d been Pistol. I’d been Pet. I’d been Other than the man who had lost not one but two men that he loved. 

And I was okay with that.

The way he said my name though, he wasn’t asking about Pistol or Pet. 

He was asking about Quinn.

“What is it?” My voice was a little more guarded now, clipped. I felt his body tense for a moment, and then my own frame was whirled around, pressed against the wall with his fingers looped through that collar and lifting me up on my toes. I looked up at him, and I couldn’t help myself -- I melted at the touch, but at the same time, I could see that curiosity burning behind the anger. 

I wanted the anger.

“What do you want, Salem? I’m fucking tired.”

The two emotions warred behind his eyes, and the anger finally won out. The hand on the color switched to wrap around my throat, and he gave it a tight squeeze.

“Are you forgetting your place?” The words were a low warning growl. One last chance for me to let this turn to a kinder conversation. That wasn’t what I signed up for.

“Seemed like a good idea.” I jerked out of his grip, giving him the first inclination that I was trained in more than just shooting a gun. It wasn’t hard to slip him -- he was big, and he could probably keep me pinned easily if he was aware of how agile I was. He didn’t expect it, though, and I ducked under his arm and bent down to pick up my shirt. I put all the defiance that I used to feel when I was _Quinn_ back into my voice. “You know what, fuck the bed. I’m going to shower. I’ll see you later.”

I could almost feel the tidal wave of the storm at my back, but he said nothing for the moment. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but as soon as I stepped out of the room, my insides quivered. I could feel every injury that I’d taken that day, and my nerve endings were already aching for the sensation of Salem filling them like I’d _thought_ was going to happen before he’d decided he needed to ask questions. I made it to the showers down the hall, locked the damn door, turned the water on, and then crumpled behind the stall with the scorching liquid running down my skin, soaking through the pants I hadn’t bothered to pull off. 

My head was thick and spinning and sick. Somehow, this has punctured through my stoicism and dissociation with everything that was going on worse than anything else had. The way he said my name, like _Quinn_ was still someone I could be. Everything was crashing around me -- what was I _doing here?_ Salem was not the kind of man who I’d ever seen myself with; he was a fucking force of nature, and I wasn’t sure if he wanted to just run right through me.

I’d fallen into him because feeling that was better than feeling the empty nothingness that was in my chest. He was supposed to be an uncomplicated partner for killing and fucking, like a drug for chasing away the pain that had threatened so hard to suck me under when Danse spoke those words to me. _No wonder people die around you._

It stung again, wrenching at my chest, breaking something else inside of me when I thought that nothing was left to be broken.

I was the reason that Silas King was dead -- I didn’t save him, when all of this shit happened. 

I was the reason that Nora was dead, because I hadn’t done anything to save her. I’d just… 

I’d failed them -- my soul, my heart. And then I’d failed Danse… I couldn’t even keep him safe and with me, and he was still breathing -- like I wasn’t good enough for him to give up a faction that wanted to _kill_ him.

I couldn’t save anyone.

 ~~Not even myself~~.

There was nothing that I could do except feel numb.

There was a sudden bang on the door, and my head snapped up so fast that it made me reel.

The other option was to feel pain. I could do that, too.

My head swam again; there were reasons that I was here. I’d wanted to kill as many people as I could to try to wash the hurt away with blood. And now…

\--- **Salem**

I was going to break him. That was all that there was to it -- Quinn was gorgeous to look at, and it was obvious that there was more to him than just the killing machine front that he’d given to me. I’d started to peel that layer back, a bit curious about who he was, other than just what he’d shown me… and he slapped me in the face with defiance.

It would have been one thing if I’d been getting that from him all along.

It was another since he’d been nothing but complacent and willingly obedient. Something in my chest rippled; excitement at this streak of defiance that made him even more interesting to me, reminded me of the shouting voice that I had followed through the Commonwealth. He differed completely from anything or anyone that I’d had before. The way that he moved out of my grip was like something alive and skilled -- he was holding out on me. There was so much more to Quinn than he’d let me see, and it almost felt like a betrayal to know that he’d hidden it. There was a burning desire to fuck him until he was crying my name and begging for my forgiveness. If I wasn’t mistaken, he wanted my anger, my roughness, instead of my inquisitiveness.

I’d give him exactly what he’d earned. 

Of course, this was all an afterthought to the fact that he’d spoken to me how he had, that he’d stalked off the way that he had with the sass that he had. I wanted to break him.

I would break him.

It actually took me a second to collect myself and go to the shower where I heard the water running. My hand was silent on the knob, twisted once… and found it locked. Whatever other emotions that I held were completely drowned out by my fury; he’d locked me out.

I took one step back and raised a powerful leg -- with a quick kick to the center of the doorway, the entire thing splintered on its hinges. I would not be locked out.

I kicked one more time and sent the thing half askew, and then stormed through -- the stall was closed, but I could see he was in there.

I ripped at the frame, metal squealing as whatever lock he’d slid home snapped out of place. And there he was, standing in soaked pants with the paint that I’d streaked on his face coming off in rivulets like black tears. 

I had a moment to see how haunted his eyes looked, lined in onyx like that and burning chartreuse and assailable, so deep that I could glimpse the fact that there was a big _something_ that he was hiding behind them.

And then they closed up -- went blank and cold, dissociating from those thoughts as he put his hands to his face and intentionally wiped away more of the paint. Apathy with a hint of antagonism. 

I could almost see the wall getting built in front of me, and that was infuriating. Quinn put his hands through his hair, slicking it back completely out of that clear, closed off face and looked at me with the water dripping down his gaze, “What do you want, Salem, I’m--”

I wasn’t listening to his shit this time. I came forward, my hand catching the slicked back mass of hair on his head and driving him to his knees. The water was soaking through the fabric of my clothing, but I really didn’t care. Quinn turned his head up to me like he was a sacrifice on a pyre -- if that was what he wanted, I’d give it to him. I’d make him burn.

I slammed him back against the wall with a fury that I should have reeled in; for just a moment, his eyes dazed, and he lost his breath from impact. That was all that I needed to unfasten my pants and thrust forward, shoving my cock between his half-parted lips. 

“Quinn.” I spoke his name in sharp staccato, my hand gripping the back of his head and forcing him to go down completely on my prick, slicked with the shower water and hard from frustration and desire. His eyes rolled up to meet mine, and I saw a spark of that person that he was, that he was trying so hard to hide - he panicked in that second, his glazed eyes seeing _something else_ , and I snarled his name again. “Quinn!” And then he was seeing me, and it was… relief. And then pain. And then anger. And then emptiness. It made me thrust harder, work him back against the breaking shower tiles until I was gliding down his throat with precision and force, leaving him gagging and gasping and scrambling until I finally pulled back and gave him a moment to breathe. 

He looked up at me with a swollen mouth and a dazed expression; there wasn’t apology there, and there wasn’t personality there, and it wasn’t enough for me -- I’d seen something, and I wanted it back. I stepped back only long enough to strip my clothing, and then I brought him to all fours on the shower floor. It only took me a second to loop my fingers through the chain that held him, so I arched him upward, left him unable to find the leverage that he’d obviously used before against me. My other hand pressed against the space between his shoulder blades -- his back was riddled with bullet scars -- and I forced his body to extend that way; sharp, almost painful, so he had to lean into me if he wanted to breathe at all.

I didn’t give him a chance to, though. I dove my hips forward and buried myself to the hilt in his body, that tight warmth that was welcoming to me even as he screamed. 

The scream didn’t taper off, but his body rocked against me; trying to get air? Trying to get closer? It didn’t really matter. I didn’t stop to think -- I just pounded against him with the full force of my strength, sending water flying from our bodies, sending him whimpering and groaning, screaming again beneath me as I filled him deeper than I ever had before. 

“Fuck!” His wordless scream turned to something understandable, and his hand pounded against the tiled floor. And then again, when he raised up enough to get air, “ **Fuck**!” 

Pain and pleasure were wrapped in that one word, and I doubled my fist in his collar and yanked, forcing his ass straight in the air while his face pressed to the floor. He screamed again, hit the tile until I saw blood washing with the water down the drain, but he didn’t actually fight to get away from me. His body tried to rock to my motions. 

“S-s--” he started to choke out a name but it was like he couldn’t force it from his chest, like just thinking about it hurt him in a way that I would never understand. “S…” Again, a scream. A dry cry, and then finally, “Salem.” He said my name like a curse and a prayer that scorched his tongue before cum nearly exploded from his tip, leaving his body bucking and writhing and clenching around my prick as he went limp beneath me. 

The submission, the pain, the clenching, the name. Whatever it was, I let my load loose inside of him and drove him down to the ground with it, until we were both soaking with the blood from his cut hands and drenching with the hot water that fell against our skin.

He was trembling beneath me when I stood; I wasn’t a complete monster. He’d paid his penance, after all. I picked him up without a word and carried him back to the bedroom, to the bed, and folded him against my chest. 

He didn’t fight it when my arms wrapped around him and my hand found the soft thickness of his hair to hold him close so he could get some sleep.

\--- **Quinn**

I’d tried to say his name, but even uttering it hadn’t felt right. Even mentioning it aloud had been wrong, because he couldn’t save me in this situation -- I knew that he couldn’t because he was dead.

 _It’s no wonder people die around you._ Danse had said it, and I’d taken it to heart in a way that had broken me more than he’d probably meant to. He’d been upset with me at the time, of course he had… but I truly believed he had no idea what he was doing.

At least, I hoped that he didn’t know what he was doing.

I groaned out, because the smell around me was thick with sex and sweet with clean water, and the man that was breathing while holding me tight was far too muscled and tall to be anyone that I’d been dreaming about. I didn’t open my eyes though -- if I kept them closed, at least for this moment in time, I could pretend that things were okay.

I could pretend that I was somewhere else other than in NukaWorld, though the sound of fucking and screaming below was quickly ridding me of that fantasy. 

I opened my eyes carefully, shifting up just slightly so I didn’t disturb the man who was breathing deeply in sleep above me. 

His paint was off -- his scars were showing, biting deep into his flesh… and for just a moment, I realized how _young_ Salem was. When he slept, he looked so different… he was maybe nineteen, and twenty was pushing it. I didn’t realize that he had such strong, sharp features that were still soft when he relaxed.

Expert hands had not sewn the scars on his face, so I could see the lines of the stitching. The one across his throat was something that he shouldn’t have survived.

That mark bisected the ‘Bad Luck’ tattoo on his neck; irony. Blue holotags glowed in the room's darkness and rested on his collarbone; they were Brotherhood of Steel issue, but I knew for a fact that he’d never stepped foot within their ranks. He and Arthur Maxson in the same room would have caused a testosterone explosion.

But that was neither here nor there. Salem was asleep, and for the first time since I’d met him, I felt like I had the upper hand in the situation. I could have easily killed him; Artem had taught me in the few times that we’d been together alone (while Sil was busy with Nora or his Father) quite a few things about the human body, and the do’s and do not’s. I was always interested in the latter.

Instead, I stretched out my hand and traced in a feather touch along the scar on his throat, the ridge of a nose that had obviously been broken. Lips split with white scars and full and soft and not arrogant.

He really was something to look at. 

My brows knit together. This wasn’t the line of thought I needed to have. Yesterday in the shower had shown me that much -- it had felt _so_ good, and it had been _so_ wrong. I’d lived that moment before, hadn’t I? But it wasn’t the same… it was… I didn’t know what it was. I was no better off here than I had been anywhere else… was I? Salem had well and truly seen that I was a broken mess of emotions, and it infuriated him in a way that sent him into a dizzying rage. 

I’d hardly been aware of myself or anything else when he picked me up from the shower; everything just hurt, and felt good, and felt wrong and right. My hands were aching, sore. I’d beaten them into the ground in my rebellious misery until I’d split them open.

_Be careful Quinn, you’re always hurting yourself._

But that voice… I was almost ashamed to even hear it now, with the headspace that I’d let myself get into. 

_I’m sorry… S…_

But I couldn’t say the name.

Instead, I flicked my eyes back to Salem, and felt a startled gasp escape my throat -- I’d been idly chasing the scars and tattoos down along the line of his chest, and something about my motion had woken him up. The blue of his gaze was softer without the sharp lines of contrast in black to make them stand out… and right now, they were looking at me with a mixture of anger, amusement, and quizzical questioning that I didn’t want to see, that I didn’t want to deal with.

I could take another fucking. Hell, I could take a beating.

I couldn’t stand the questions. 

I started to pull my hand away from his frame, but his own came out in a flash, catching my wrist -- just like that first time, I wondered for a moment if he was going to break it, or throw me around… but instead, he just brought it back to his chest in a slow motion that left my palm flat against the beating of his heart.

Things with Salem were a dizzying kind of strange that I couldn’t keep up with.

He kept the paint that he wore like a mask at the side of the bed, and I’d watched him wear it and apply it enough to know the lines. I stretched out over him and took it in my palm -- he didn’t need to know that it was because I couldn’t stand looking at him this way.

Looking at him without his paint, I could see the man that he easily could have been, had it not been for whatever had turned him to the life of a raider. Nude, with the covers slung low over the cut of his hips, his dog tags hanging at his throat, my entire body was burning with the knowledge of _what if_.

I didn’t want that.

I uncapped the paint and dipped my finger inside of it; I had to do it all one handed, because he kept my wrist captive. My body was a long, hot line against his own when I leaned up and traced the marks that he always kept so pointedly on his features. 

He was watching me with those careful, scrutinizing eyes… and then he finally closed his lids and let out a small hum of satisfaction as I got to work.

There was something complicated about the pattern he had, webbing and spattering; he drew it on close to the same every time that he brought the paint to his face. I wasn’t sure that I could do it perfectly, but I knew that I could do it enough to make sure he looked like the Raider he was; the roughness that had drawn me to him… 

The pain capable of making the emptiness inside of me seem less empty in the moments when we were together.

I worked in silence for a few minutes, strokes here, careful touches there. The proximity of our bodies wasn’t lost to me, and I could tell that it wasn’t lost to Salem by the hardness pressed against my knee; everything about him was always big and always hard, though, so it wasn’t a shock.

“Quinn…” He murmured my name out, and I was surprised by how gentle his voice could be when he was relaxed. We hadn’t spent a morning like this before, bare and clean and wrapped around each other in what I could only call and refused to say was a lover’s embrace.

“Yes?” I kept my voice soft, unwilling to spark the fury in him unless I had to. I’d rather get out and just fight today, if my body had the strength for it. It would be better, maybe, than what had happened in the showers.

It would be better, certainly, than the intimacy that built as I finished painting on his mask. I smudged the last of the blackness across his lids and sat back.

There.

He was a raider again.

I could look at that face and not see some kind of possibility.

His lids opened, the blue so stark and so bold now. “Roll over.”

My throat caught, tight. I didn’t want -- I didn’t know if I was capable of this happening again. Instead of waiting to see if I would resist or comply, he used the strength of his lower body to push me over. I ended up flat on my back, and some of the anxiety in me eased, even though he had me pinned down.

He took the paint from me, drizzled it across his palm, and then pressed his hand over my chin, my lips -- I relaxed; he was putting my mask back on as well, wiping away _Quinn_ , who had been part of the army. _Quinn_ , who had loved… S… _Quinn_ , who had watched them both die and then come back out cold… and _Quinn_ , who had opened his heart again to a soldier, only to have it crushed beneath fucking power armor boots. 

That was fine. I didn’t want that _Quinn_ , anyway. I knew I looked vulnerable there beneath him, and maybe he did, too. I don’t know if it was too much for him or he simply didn’t like what it looked like -- his hand came over the right side of my face and he pressed another print there, turning my jaw to the side and closing my eyes as he smeared the paint under a touch that was more gentle than I’d thought he knew how to give.

Another low hum pulled from his chest, and he took a few moments to add more splotches of paint to my countenance, blacking out my eyes, streaks here, streaks there, lapping over but never covering those strong prints of his hand that marked me just as much as his collar did. After a moment, though, he pressed his palm back against the side of my head, over that handprint, keeping my face turned away from him.

I wasn’t sure what he was going to do when he shifted, but I felt it when the soft brush of his lips touched my neck, his tongue licking at my pulse before he gave a gentle bite against it.

A low groan pulled out of me that I didn’t mean to let loose. This touch was so different from anything he’d given before, and I didn’t realize how much my body was craving it; a reprieve from the roughness, a moment to feel _human._ He grinned against my skin and pressed another kiss and lick at the joint between my shoulder and neck.

I squirmed under him, but his hand on my face kept me still, kept me from looking at what he was doing as he shifted down further, licking the line of my collarbone, tracing back over the cool feel of his saliva on my skin with kisses and nips that had my entire body burning.

What was he doing?

Why was he being so… gentle?

What **_trick_ **was this?

His mouth trailed lower, tongue circling the taut peaks of my nipples and teeth grazing them until I groaned out against him -- he shifted, popped his thumb into my mouth and against my tongue so I couldn’t speak, could only close my lips on it and groan out against the taste of his clean skin. The taste of my skin mingling with his where he’d touched me

His head spilled lower, mouth working a line against the abs on my torso, tongue delving into each valley and plane and then coming back up again before going lower still. He found the sharpness of my hip and bit down there until I squirmed against him, bit down on his thumb and cried out -- with a grin against my flesh, he licked it, kissed it, and then blew hot breath across my pelvis before coming to the hardness of my length that had jumped to life at his saccharine touch and unexpected softness.

_Who was this?_

I groaned softly, because he wasn’t taking my prick into his mouth, and his damn arms were long enough to keep my head turned so I could do nothing but squirm and clench my cut palms into the sheets. 

Hot breath, playing against skin.

A warm lick, and then the cool air like a bite against me.

I was going crazy. 

He was trying to drive me insane. It was the only explanation that I had for it as he took me in his mouth and swallowed me down. There was nothing rough about what he was doing, but a gentle insistence that almost seemed to demand my pleasure in the way that he demanded my submission. I groaned out against him, involuntarily sucked on the digit in my mouth for a moment before biting down again. 

I felt that satisfied hum against my skin, and it sent ripples of pleasure rolling through me until I could do nothing but give myself over to whatever was happening. There was a measure of distrustful apprehension… but his hands were so soft, one still holding my head to the side, the other stroking along the length of my thigh, up and down in a tickling, slow motion that only served to bring more pleasure tingling through my skin.

That hand, though, eventually drifted upward, I felt it when he spilled it between my legs. He took a moment to raise his head from my cock, but it was only a brief moment, and then saliva soaked fingers found the tightness of my sore core, and I had a brief, whimpering moment of panic when he pressed digits there.

But the gentleness never stopped -- it never faded. He worked my prick up and down in slow, hungry strokes that had his tongue licking everywhere, his mouth sucking and gulping at the taste of me until I was a writhing mess, until my brain muddled and whoever I was with made little sense in light of how good it was making me feel. 

The finger worked in tandem with the tongue, stroking and working and opening me up slowly, so by the time I came in his mouth, my body was still trembling for the feel of him, even as pleasure swept through me and left me dizzy and gasping and nearly choking on his finger when I tried to cry out softly.

“Shhhh… Quinn.” He gave another slow lick along the length of me, and I expected him to crawl on top of me then, to find his pleasure where he could and break the gentle spell that had fallen over me. 

But he was crawling up along my body instead, and he finally shifted his thumb from my mouth, used the hand that had held my head to the side to turn me to look at him. “Shhhh…” he murmured it out again, and lowered his head to kiss me.

It was _nothing_ like he’d given before. It was soft, and slow, and his tongue tasted like salt and sweat and cum, and he explored every inch of my mouth in a languid pace that had my heart thundering in my chest and my head reeling again.

This didn’t seem real; he was keeping me so dizzy that I was never going to find steady ground to stand on. 

Trick. But…

“Mmmm, Salem… what are…” He pulled back from the kiss and stroked along my jaw for a moment, and then started to shift away from me, “Where are you going?” The words came out almost slurry, my body was hot and confused from his actions, from touches so gentle that I realized I’d been starved for them. Danse wasn’t like this --it was… I couldn’t… I…

“You look like you need rest.” There was a tone to his voice, like he could read my face and tell that I didn’t.

“No, wait… I…” I swallowed hard; my throat ached from my screaming and the agony that he’d put it through last night. What was I doing? 

I should have let him leave.

My body was burning.

My head was spinning.

I was confused.

And there was the _S…_ and the fact that nothing that I could do would ever bring that back. That there was a hole in my chest that Danse didn’t fill, that he had widened, and… I...

“Don’t.”

“Hmmm?” He stopped, and the slow curve of his grin made me wonder again if this was a trick after all. This was aftercare, the most saccharine and doting that he had ever given me. 

What in the fuck was he doing?

“I…” I frowned. I bit my lip. I turned my head away from him again and closed my eyes, because confusion was playing torment in my mind. 

I felt him move over me like a cool whisper, but still, he didn’t thrust inside of me, didn’t hurt me. He just laid over me so I could feel all of his heat and strength, and he licked the shell of my ear before whispering to me. “What do you want, Quinn?”

My head turned slowly, and I knew that I couldn’t guard my eyes. I hurt. 

I hurt so much.

“Salem, please?” I didn’t have the strength to ask, I didn’t know _what_ I wanted, but that didn’t seem to matter to him. He slid his hands beneath my back and turned me over slowly. I squirmed against him again, sure this time that he was going to just climb atop me and do what he needed to find himself.

Instead, his mouth found the nape of my neck, and he bit there again -- a soft, aching sensation that made me grunt and buck against the bed. That kiss inched down, until he found what I knew to be a scar mark. Sword… bullet… I wasn’t sure. But he touched his pout to it, tongue playing along the slickness, and then he followed the spotting of scars down along my back, lips finding each one as though he could somehow taste the story they’d left behind. 

“Salem…” I groaned his name against the pillow, but I didn’t move beneath his ministrations. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to, if it would break whatever spell had come over him, whatever spell had come over me that made me crave this gentle touch, a whole different kind of domination that I hadn’t been expecting and never thought he would give. 

“Shhhh…” he murmured it again, his tongue gliding sweetly at the top of my ass and his teeth grazing the flesh there. My eyes rolled closed, and I felt my breath hitch in my chest as he traced the line down and licked there for a moment like a cat content to have found the cream. Only when I was squirming and groaning softly did he finally raise up, slip one hand beneath my chest and prop himself carefully with the other. 

“You want this?” His voice was still nothing more than a soft murmur, playing havoc with my brain, making me slip back and forth between the horrific present that I was in and the past that I was trying so hard to escape.

Tenderness.

Fucking tenderness.

And yet I could feel him pressed against me, his hips flexing to make his hardness play gently at my ass. 

I nodded. It was all that I could do. 

It was enough. 

He shifted, and slowly, so slowly that I felt like I was tearing apart from the inside out from _need_ , he slid inside of me. There was nothing rough about this, nothing hard. It was all soft strokes and deep touches until I was panting and writhing beneath him and it was only his hand wrapped around my chest and curling into my shoulder that kept me from flying apart. 

I wasn’t sane at that moment, and I knew it. I was just sensation and all the emotion that I had tried to keep buried so deep; I honestly wasn’t sure if this was Salem showing me who he was, or Salem seeing the fracture inside of me and manipulating it to his own advantage.

I didn’t know.

I didn’t care.

I just lost myself to the feel of it as he stroked deep inside of me until his breath was coming in soft, ragged gasps and we were both groaning from it.

The hand at my chest suddenly spiked to claws -- nails dug along the length of my torso, stopping to clench at my stomach as he pulled me tighter against him and thrust one more time. 

The spill was so hot, so filling, and my body reacted to it -- I tensed again, pleasure spiking through me and sending me into orgasm, whimpering and moaning and incapable of saying a name for fear of what I’d choke on.

Salem rolled over with his cock still buried inside of me, his arm still secure around my waist… and he held me like that. His free hand stroked up and down my side, proprietary and comforting… and the confusion in my chest, my gut, my heart just made me tremble at the touch.

After a while, there was only one real cure for it. 

“Can we clear the Safari today?” My voice was soft, my words a question. I needed blood, and death. It was less confusing than this. My life was colliding the present with the past, and I couldn’t.

I wouldn’t.

I couldn’t be _Quinn_ again. 


	3. A Faded Fucking Reminder

\--- **Salem**

I watched him tear apart the Safari Zone almost single-handedly. There was a vehemence to what he was doing, a recklessness that left him throwing himself into danger when he didn’t need to, taking chances that left him more bloody than we usually were when all was said and done.

But I knew that I was probably at least partially to blame for that one. The night before had been anger, and the screams that Quinn had given weren’t all pleasure; maybe the pain was still what he wanted, but I found myself curious at the visceral reaction.

There were so many layers beneath who he was showing me, and I’d seen a peek at it last night. 

That glimpse showed me  _ pain _ , and  **loss** and  **_trauma_ ** that I wasn’t making better.

And I wanted to know every single one of those emotions.

He was killing things as though he was trying to get himself killed in response, and I had a feeling that trying to pry those emotions from him like I had last night wouldn’t go over well.

The tenderness of the morning had helped, or hurt, I wasn’t sure. It had confused, I could tell that much. There always seemed to be a word on his tongue that he wouldn’t say aloud, a past he pressed so deep inside of him that I wondered if he was trying to turn it to diamond. 

I’d have it. Quinn didn’t know it, but I was very persuasive, and not used to being thwarted when it came to getting my way.

I’d just underestimated that he was going to be so  _ stubborn _ .

It shouldn’t have mattered, honestly. I’d listened to Preston’s story when I’d been with him, and I had felt little empathy for the betrayal and pain that he’d felt. His entire world was crashing around him in a rain of depression, and I’d cared more about what a good fuck he was, instead of how fucked up his head seemed to be.

I’d been with others in the past who had tried to get close, and I’d either shut it down or tuned it out, or stuffed a cock into their mouth until they forgot that they wanted to tell me all about their  _ feelings _ .

Maybe that’s what was different with Quinn.

He wasn’t sharing.

He refused to share.

The most that I’d seen of who he was had been when I was silently watching him while he fought with the tin-can. That was him at his most blazing, his most convicted. He’d seemed to be  _ someone _ then, other than just a killing and fucking machine.

I’d seen more in the shower, when he’d broken down beneath me. He didn’t cry, but he’d screamed… and that scream almost echoed a litany to  _ stop this _ and  _ I’ve been here before. _

But how had he been there?

And then… this morning, when he’d fallen apart under my touch that was so tender… he’d been something else, someone else, somewhere else. He’d looked at me for all the world like he could see Salem, not the raider. Just Salem.

And then he’d stopped -- shut down, pushed it away. 

For a moment, I’d thought about being angry.

Instead, I was  _ tender _ , and that seemed to break him just as much and bring him to heel. 

I was actually  _ confused _ , conflicted by my own wants and desires, and I didn’t like the sensation of it. 

The problem with Quinn was the fact that he was stubborn; it was an odd combination. He was loyal and obedient to a fault, as long as it was sex, or fighting. When it came to his emotions, there was a wall there so high that I couldn’t see over the top. I’d never really  _ cared _ about scaling any mountain before, and I wondered if it was his defiance that made me care now.

His closed-off nature.

The fact that there was so much to him, and he was only letting me scratch a dented surface. 

Or maybe it was something else; I didn’t know. I didn’t care. I only knew that I’d set a new goal in my sights; I wanted to unravel Quinn for all that he was, and I would not relent until I got exactly what I desired.

“I think if we secure the Bottling Plant, we’ll have most everything we need.” Getting the amusement park up and running had been Quinn’s idea. Once he’d realized that it could actually be turned back on he’d been obsessive about it. He licked his lips now, looking at the map in his hands and frowning a bit. “I don’t think we’re missing anything else.” 

“Why do you want the park to run so badly, anyway?” I looked around us. It was just a beaten down shell like the rest of the world. It held memories of a time before I could even fathom, a world that I wasn’t a part of. 

I was fine with putting it into working order to placate him and the Raiders; I understood that it was important to keep a group of people who you ruled happy. But they were bickering about it already, because there weren’t enough areas to divide evenly between them.

I was probably going to kill some of them.

Or all of them.

I wasn’t sure yet.

“We always wanted to come here.” He answered off-hand, his concentration entrenched enough on the map that he actually answered a question for once.

And I didn’t like the answer.

“ _ We _ ?”

I saw it when his eyes stopped flickering, when the light behind them went out like a shot bulb. He folded the map and stuffed it into his cargo pants, pulling his pistol out as he did so.

“It doesn’t matter. I just want it running because there’s nothing else to do around here.” Quinn could go from hot to cold in an instant, winter springing into his eyes. I frowned; I was not in the mood for petulant shit again.

“Nothing, hm?” 

His eyes slid to the side to look at me. I could see the gears turning; Quinn was clever enough to have picked up fairly early on the fact that one way to deviate me from prying was to ply me with blood or sex. The two distractions were usually enough to placate me. Right now, though, I wasn’t sure if I wanted that to happen.

“I’m sure that we could come up with some kind of entertainment.” His voice was silky, and though he kept his hand on his pistol, the look that he gave me clearly told me we could take a detour from the plant, if that's what I wanted.

“I think so, too.” I grinned in response, and I could see the triumph in his eyes. He thought he’d won. “Why don’t we start by you telling me why in the hell you would have wanted to come here before, and with who?”

He drew up short, fingers clenching the gun in his palm until his knuckles turned white. 

"I don't see how that's any of your business. You don't own my past, Salem. It's mine." Quinn's voice was a growl when he spoke, but I watched it as he steeled himself before the words spilled from his throat. His eyes were still far away, drowning under the waves of the memories he was hiding from me. It was like he knew that he was getting into trouble, knew that he was going to incense me... and he decided that doing so would be more favorable than actually letting me know the answers I sought.

I wasn't going to let him off that easily. My fingers slipped upward, gripping through the collar at his throat; those green eyes flared wide for a moment, and I could see the mixture of panic, triumph and desire that ripped through him. It wasn't that he wanted to be in this situation, but he wanted to be in any situation that would stop him from telling me the truth.

But the truth was what I wanted -- more than I wanted to punish him for his insolence, and more than I wanted to fuck him until he was crying my name out. I wanted the truth, and I would have it.

\--- **Quinn**

I'd known when I slipped up that he was going to ask about it. I'd been looking at the map, and my mind had been drifting. I tried not to let that happen, because I knew the pain that usually rocked through me after the fact. Memories of the past were such a faraway thing, but looking at the stupid map of NukaWorld, and thinking about the fact that I was going to have it up and running soon was enough to flood me with thoughts of conversations held long ago.

_ 'Come on, Sil. You have to admit it looks fun.' _

_ 'I don't know how much fun being strapped into a metal death trap going over one hundred miles per hour can really be.'  _

_ 'What if I promise to make it worth your while?' _

_ 'Quinn...' _

But there had been excitement there, and it wasn't as though the entire park was just full of roller coasters. There was so much to see -- the animals, the bottling plant, there were even rumors about a Vault there. He and Nora had been discharged, and I was on leave... we were going to go on a date. 

And...

_ We... _

I'd said we, and I knew it the instant that Salem brought it to my attention. My heart stopped; not because I was afraid of him, but because I knew that I'd let myself fall into thoughts of something that I could never have. I had to swallow against the sensation of nausea and pain that poured through me, and by the time I was in control of my own senses again, Salem was dragging me across the park by the collar around my throat, and I was wondering if he was going to fuck me or just kill me this time for my attitude. 

I wasn't sure which one would be better at this point, with the pain that was rocking through my chest from the visceral memories still trying to push their way to the surface.

Sil, smiling because he was happy to indulge me, even if he was going to go kicking and screaming anywhere near a roller coaster. 

I--

"Quinn,” and Silas' winter sky eyes faded to the blue ocean that was Salem's. I was here, in the present -- and I was pinned against a wall with a hand at my throat that almost made it hard for me to speak. I felt a surge of emotion ripping through me; I wanted to circumvent this situation. I could see the anger bubbling there, I could see the rage that was barely unkempt behind his eyes... but there was more than that. The curiosity was still there, and I couldn't seem to dodge it this time by infuriating him.

He wasn't going to let it go.

He wasn't going to let me go.

"What?" I cried the word out in anger, in pain that I could barely wrap my head around. "What do you want from me, Salem? Fuck!" My hand came up, gripping his wrist until my nails bit into the skin of his forearm. "What do you want?"

"You." Salem's voice was a burn that tore across my skin. The word was such an intensity, spoken as though he knew for a fact that he deserved it, that he would take it. That he wouldn't take no for an answer.

And I was sure that he wouldn't -- he would be persuasive through physical force, through whatever means he had at hand. I was faced with a situation that I didn't know how to control, didn't know how to escape... and Silas King's eyes were still burning at the back of my mind, his voice still whispering my name in my ear.

_ Quinn. Stay alive. _

But not whole. Not anymore. I was a fractured mockery of who I used to be... and...

Maybe that was the answer. 

"I came out of a Vault, Salem." My voice was soft, but strong. It was obvious that I was being honest. Maybe because every word that came out of my mouth was like pulling teeth. I was going to give him one of the fractured slivers. One of the pieces of me that used to be Quinn.

Just not the ones that were important. 

"A... Vault?" Salem's eyes narrowed. Everyone who existed in the Commonwealth or surrounding areas had heard of Vault-Tec, so I knew that he knew what I was talking about. He looked me up and down, and the corner of his mouth turned up. "That makes sense." He paused, his eyes focused on me, clearly indicating that I wasn't done.

I sighed, my hands still digging into the flesh of his arm as he slowly lowered me down. My grip there was defensive, yes, but it was also a way to anchor me to the present -- I wanted to speak of Quinn like he was someone that I knew before. He wasn't me.

"Yes. From a Vault. I used to be army,  _ before _ the war. The bombs. 'We' was my..." I swallowed hard, looked away, "My squad. Your squad is your family in the army, because they're all you have. We were going to come here."

Truth.

Mostly. 

He paused for a moment, looking at me. I could see him reading my eyes, and I forced myself to open just a little, to let him see the broken pieces inside, to let him see where Quinn used to live. 

"The army was your family."

"Yes. I'm not even from  _ your _ world." I bit the words out carefully. "So even if you wanted to kill my past, you can't, Salem." My eyes widened, and I choked the next words out. "It's already fucking dead."

Just like me...

At least, on the inside.

I felt my body burning in pain, the dizzying wave of misery from what I'd just said aloud and Danse's words of accusation echoing in my head about exactly whose fault it had been... but that pain was soothed by the balm of two hands coming up and gripping my face, forcing my chin to turn up... and hot lips spilling down to cauterize the fissures of the agonizing past that I'd been forced to expose. 

\--- **Salem**

The kaleidoscope of emotion behind Quinn's eyes was the most intriguing thing that I'd ever seen in my life. I knew that he was telling the truth; I'd known something like this from the beginning. He simply wasn't from this time... and the training and expertise that he held. Army.

Of course he was army. Something that had been organized, efficient, everything that I'd wanted to bring to the world before I realized that the people in the Commonwealth were too fucking helpless to ever take care of themselves. 

He was the past, before the world was broken.

And I could see that he was  _ still _ holding out on me, but that he'd finally, finally breathed an ounce of truth. His squad -- his family. There was more to it. 

I wanted it all.

I kissed him for a moment, my lips hot and my body firm as I pressed him against the wall, until he was writhing softly against me; distracting me from further questioning, maybe? Trying to lose the pain in his eyes to the fire of the present? Whatever it was, I wasn't going to let myself fall into it.

Not just yet, even though my head was already swirling with desire and I knew that I wasn't going to be able to stop myself for much longer.

"Quinn," I pulled back from the kiss, and he grunted in derision and tangled his hands in my dark hair, jerking my head back down for a moment in a forceful motion that sent me reeling back, because for a split second, it had felt  _ right.  _ I growled and put a hand to his chest, exerting my strength so he couldn't move.

"Who was in your squad?"

And that careful heat that had been building behind his eyes shattered. It turned cold, and then hot again in a surge of anger.

"For fuck's sake, Salem. I can't do this. You can't take me apart one piece after another. They don't  _ belong _ to you." 

Another wave of fury roared through me, my hand angling upward to grip him yet again by the chain at his throat -- I pulled upward, jerked until he was on his tiptoes... and then caught sight of the flickering emotions that he hadn't managed to hide behind that gaze.

Those emotions...

I leaned in, until my mouth was brushing his, until I covered him completely, spilling my heat and my very presence all across his senses.

"Fine. But you'll tell me more, Quinn." My mouth opened, and I bit his lower lip until I tasted blood, until he whimpered for me. "I want the stories of your scars."

"I--"

"One at a time, and not every day. But when I ask, you tell me." 

"My scars?"

I released him and trailed my finger along a line at his mouth. It looked like silvery lines from wounds that had almost faded. "Yes. How did this happen?"

He stared at me wide eyed for a moment, his breath coming hard, his mouth in a full line of displeasure. But finally, he spoke. Short. Staccato. 

"My father took a vodka bottle to my face." 

I nodded, and then I released him, letting his feet fall back to the ground flat. My fingers traced those silvery lines carefully, running across the top of his lip. "All right." That scar was mine now.

That piece of him belonged to me.

And before I was through, I would take them all. One at a time... but they would all be mine.

  
  


**\---Quinn**

Salem was true to his words. At first, I thought that he was going to drop the topic, that the little bit of information that he'd squeezed out of me would be enough to sate him. I tried to take my mind off of it, instead throwing myself into killing everything in my line of sight when we got to the bottling factory. 

There were some repairs we had to do, some things we had to put into place... but everything was coming together. Finally. It wouldn't take more than a week and the park would be up and running.

The next day, Salem came up behind me while we were standing at Fizztop Grille, organizing the repairs. His finger came forward and brushed against a scar that ran the length of my ribs. I shuddered at the touch, turned to him in expectation, and he shook his head slowly. "Tell me."

Tell me. Demand in his eyes, in his stance. The knowledge that I'd made a deal with him and he was damn sure going to make sure I kept up with my end of the bargain.

But what was I getting out of all of this?

My eyes flashed down to the streak that ran along my ribs. I had so many scars that for a moment, I had to think. That one was fresher; a pinkish white. "Have you ever heard of a place called Swan's Pond?"

His eyes widened in shock. Apparently he  _ had heard of it _ , which meant that it would make my explanation more received and believed. "Well, I hadn't. But I did see a Grognak comic on the pavilion there... one thing led to another, and..." I shrugged off the memory of the powerfist grazing my side, tearing my body open. 

I shrugged it off because in that memory, Danse had picked me up and carried me back to Diamond City so I could rest and recover. 

Things had been good then, and we'd spent a few nights tucked away in Home Plate, enjoying each other and just being... happy. That was when I wasn't sure if I could ever be happy again, and I'd let myself believe that maybe, just maybe, I could.

That was right before we went on our damn mission into the Institute and the information about Danse being a synth had come back. Before Maxson had ordered me to kill him... and before Danse had decided to keep his loyalty to the assholes who were doing everything that they could to make sure that he died. 

It was... distressing... to think about it. Instead, I shifted my attention to Salem's finger, still tracing the scar in a damn near possessive manner. I could tell what he was doing -- what he was getting at. It was like the scars were a piece of me, and I was keeping myself back from him.

He was taking it, little by little. He was a possessive asshole, and it was clear that he wasn't going to be satisfied until he'd pried as much of me as he could from my grasp. It was just my luck that I was so covered in scars that he would take  _ a lot. _

I hated it.

\---

The next scar that he touched was a bullet wound on my back; that one was a little harder than the other two that he'd come across. I frowned, stood silently for a moment -- he seemed to take it as an act of contrition, because he was suddenly spinning me around, lifting me until I was pressed with my back against the wall, his eyes blazing, his entire body demanding.

"Fuck," I breathed the word out, hard and hot, because it had actually been a few days since I'd pissed him off. There was something horrifying about the strength of him when he was angry, something terrifying about the way he seemed to be incapable of holding all of those emotions inside. Salem didn't hide anything about himself; he played it all on his non-existent sleeve, and seemed more than capable of handling whatever the world dished out to him. It was clear from all of the scars on his body that he'd at least experienced physical pains, that he'd gone through something rough... but he acted like it didn't bother him, like it didn't even matter. 

Like he couldn't feel it.

I wanted to know how he managed that. 

When he surged forward and crashed his lips against mine, my arms shot around him like snakes, twining into the straps of his harness and holding tight -- his teeth were on my tongue, biting down as though he could somehow force the answer from me that way... when in all honesty, it was another one that I wasn't anxious about giving... it was just the matter of trying to remember where the bullet wound had come from.

I'd been shot more times than I liked to admit. 

I could just give him a blanket statement about them all, and it would probably cover the majority of it without me being much of a liar... but I wasn't sure if he would settle for it.

I finally pulled back from the kiss, and the smoldering look in his gaze made me wonder if he even remembered the question he’d asked. His hand shot down my frame, slipped into my pants, seized my prick, and started pumping at my already half-hard cock, but that scorching voice growled out confirmation.

"Tell. Me."

"God..." I groaned the word out, biting my lower lip and letting my head fall back against the wall. For a moment, my eyes fluttered shut, and I lost myself to the rough way that he touched me, his hand on my throat, his palm on my prick. Finally, I gasped out the answer that he wanted. "Fuck, I wasn't dodging. I just..." I groaned again, his hand was working harder, almost as though he wanted me to fail at answering him, because the thought of punishing me was nearly as sweet as the truth that he was so determined to seek. "Fuck... fuck... Salem, I--" I groaned again, lost, caught in the moment, a slave to the beat of his hand on my cock until my stomach clenched and cum spilled out, slicking his palm, sticking against the fabric of my pants. 

I was too wild at that moment to remember my answer, but his hand on my throat reminded me when it tightened.

"Army. Fuck -- battles. Skirmishes. There are too many scars on my back for me to remember what bullet came from who, but it was from one fight or another. Shit." And then he lowered me slightly, and I breathed out again, "Shit!" 

But the answer didn't seem to placate the need that was roaring through him, because he was already stripping me of my cargo pants and flipping me around to press against the wall -- but before he leaned in to fuck me, I felt him lower his head and lick his tongue hungrily along the scar.

Another part of me for him.

Another piece of me that he wasn't going to give back.

_ I had to get out of here. _

There were places that I could go -- I'd heard of plenty of them. The Commonwealth wasn't the only location that had settlements, after all. MacCready talked about a place called The Capital Wasteland, and I knew that Maxson himself had come from there. It was a possibility, because obviously if Maxson was here now, he wouldn't be there when I arrived. There was a place up north in Maine that I could head off to. I'd been there with Nick once, and the Brotherhood of Steel hadn't been there at all.

And there were places to the west as well -- California, New Vegas. I was sure that there were people in all of the big cities.

There were options, and I was going to have to take one of them. I felt restricted, confined, and more than that... the more and more that Salem laid his fingers across my body, I felt  _ exposed _ . He was going to tear me open and see that my insides were in a thousand pieces, and I wasn't willing to allow that to happen. 

But how could I leave? The park was almost up and running, and even though he pried, there was something addictive about Salem's strength, the pain that he rocked through my body... the way that he could make me completely forget who I was in the wake of the passion and fucking and fighting.

I was trapped -- lost. And I told myself... just one more day. Just until the park was finished.

And then I would leave.

I knew that part of the reason that I held myself off was that leaving meant that I would have to return to Spectacle Island. I didn't want to see Danse again; I didn't want to face it if he was still full of anger, and I didn't think that I could look him in the eye if he was full of hurt. I wasn't the Quinn that he'd known... I'd done things now, let myself break into so many parts that he wouldn't be able to put it back together if that was what he wanted...

But I couldn't  _ not _ go. I had a lockbox there, buried deep beneath the floorboards of the house that I'd built for us. It held everything from my past -- a jacket patch, a bullet, a photo, rings, a smile... memories of Silas and Nora that I wasn't willing to give up, even if that part of me didn't really exist anymore.

I had to go back.

_ I couldn't go back. _

So instead, I went to Salem; his rough hands and wicked grin gave me a moment of reprieve from the agony twisting in my gut at the thought of what I needed to do.

**\--- Salem**

He was more compliant in giving me the answers than I thought he would be. More willing to give himself over to my demands and punishments if he didn't meet them than I would have thought possible. Maybe it was because the scars that I touched all came with a story that he didn't mind to tell; his father had cut his face, burned his leg, broken his fingers. He talked about the man with a cold and calculated dispassion that told me he was so far removed from that situation that nothing that he could say about it would hurt him.

He was a little more standoffish when it came to the ones that came with the present; the fact that he'd killed that creature at Swan's Pond was impressive. The way that he'd shut down right after told me that there was more to the story that I would press for later. For now, I was mapping out Quinn, all that he was and all that he had been. Once I knew how to navigate, I was going to figure him out on the  _ inside _ .

I could see that it was doing something to him though -- for every bit he gave me, he pulled away in turn. It wasn't a physical thing; if anything, we were fucking and fighting more than before. Any chance that he got, he would pull me into a corner, dive his hands between my legs, and force me to forget what I was doing to him. 

It was intentional and had it not been lost to me. I would have to do something to make sure that he didn't continue to distract me -- there were so many scars all along his frame, and I knew that they all had a different story, and some of them were fresher than others.

I wanted to know everything about him.

\---

He saw me approach the next day, and he saw where my eyes were focused. A scar ran the length of his back, from shoulder to the top of his ass; my eyes were rapt and locked on it when he looked up at me from the mirror where he was carefully applying his face paint.

Something in his face paled slightly, his eyes widened, and he whirled in a quick motion that brought me up short.

"I want--"

"This one." His hand struck out suddenly, and his fingers ran the length of my throat... it only took me a second to realize what he meant. It wasn't my throat.

It was the scar that spilled there. 

"What?"

"It's only fair. My turn. How did you get this scar?" I could hear the desperation and panic pulsing and pouring through his entire body and escaping out his throat, a complete aversion to the place that I'd been looking.

That meant that I wanted that scar even more; it was one of the ones that he'd been trying to avoid... something that he wanted to hold out on. I thought about pushing his hand to the side; thought about telling him that he didn't get a turn... but I decided against it. What would it really hurt, if I told him about my mother? What would it do except give him no excuse to defy me today, to fight me on the information that I wanted.

Quinn, for all that he was, was still a thing of honor. I could tell that about him; as much as he tried to leave who he was in the past, parts of it still took fleeting glimpses through his green eyes.

"It was a knife, Brotherhood of Steel issue." And I could have left it at that, but why would I? There was so much more to the story than that, after all.

"My mother left me in the middle of Salem when I was a baby -- a woman found me, a raider, and raised me. But she'd seen the bitch retreat. She gave me the Brotherhood of Steel uniform that I’d been wrapped up before I was left there on the streets to die." I still had that uniform, tucked away in the back of a closet, a little memento of what I'd been and where I came from. "It took me years, but I tracked her down. That bitch and her entire squad." My lips pulled into a grin at the memory of it, but Quinn's eyes were full of something other than the savage joy that I felt at knowing I'd get my revenge.

Pity. Sorrow. Something chasing behind those two emotions that I'd seen when he looked at me that day that I'd woken up without my paint.

Something more. 

I shook the sensation that it tried to pull from my chest and continued. "I took them out one by one; I thought about just killing her outright, but it wasn't enough. And when I found her at the station where she was trying to radio for help, she was surrounded by ghouls... getting ripped to shreds." I felt something in my eyes harden then... for just a moment, even though I didn't mean to let it.

When I'd seen her, for that brief flash of a second, I'd thought about the way that things could be; I saved her. She never had to know that I was what was hunting them down.

She would be thankful. 

She would give me a damn good excuse about why she abandoned me.

Things would change.

But they hadn't. 

"She was disgusted with me, told me that I should be dead... and then she took a knife to my throat." Quinn's eyes widened at that, his gaze flickering to the scars again, his fingers tracing them lightly. He stayed silent, though, caught up in the reverie of my tale.

"I squeezed the fucking life out of her and left her for whatever came to scavenge her god damn bones. Though," my fingers drifted to the chain on my neck, the holotags that burned a bright blue. "I did take a souvenir." 

Quinn was looking at me, and that expression from earlier hadn't left his features. It was almost haunted. 

"Salem..." His voice was softer than I'd ever heard it, and I wasn't sure that I wanted that sympathy. It made something in my chest twist, elicited a memory of the hurt that I'd felt on that day, standing at eighteen years old with a mother trying to kill me. 

"I had to crawl my way to the nearest shelter I could find and have some half-ass doctor patch me up. He didn't do a very pretty job, though, did he?" My grin was savage.

My insides were warm.

Quinn stretched up and slowly, his eyes careful and cautious as he did so, he pressed a kiss to the scars along my throat. First one side, a ghost of a touch along the line of it, and then the other. Pressed over my bisected Bad Luck tattoo.

My insides jolted again.

I didn't want to feel  _ this _ . 

I grunted in derision, irritation pouring through me. This wasn't about opening me up and finding out what was on my insides... it was supposed to be about seeing who Quinn was. 

Finding out how he worked.

I seized him around the waist and practically threw him across the room, so his frame bounced on the couch where I'd tossed him and he seemed stunned.

It only took him a moment though, to see what was in my eyes. He tried to scramble up, and I thought that he meant to run away... but instead, he met me halfway across the room and half leaped against me when I came at him.

It was almost like a fight; it almost felt like we were going to tear each other apart. At that moment, I wasn't sure what was going to happen, but it was Quinn's mouth that crashed against mine this time, Quinn whose lips were greedy and fervent, kissing me as though he wanted to swallow me down; he was looking at me when he pulled back, looking past me -- past who I was. He was looking at me like he could see someone else, and I didn't understand.

I didn't have to understand to feel how hot his body was against mine. I didn't have to understand to let out a low growling grunt of need and desire and pick him up again. His back hit the wall hard, and he groaned with it, but his arms stayed twined around my neck, and he kissed me again.

It was softer.

It made my head spin.

My hands were rough in response, jerking his vest from his upper body, tearing his pants away with movements that damn near dislocated parts of him... but for every ounce of viciousness that I gave, he gave something else in return; something softer. Something that demanded that I see what he was seeing, if only for just that moment.

I didn't know what he was looking at; I didn't know how to be whatever was in his eyes. But his mouth was soft again, tongue a gentle, insistent lap that finally slowed the fervor of my pace and had me pressed against him, kissing slow and lazy, and burning with some desire that was roaring in my chest and threatening to spill out.

"Fuck." I growled the word out and picked him up again, this time getting him to the bed before I threw him down. He bounced from the strength of it, but he came up to his knees to meet me again when I reached the bed -- his hands glided my chest, tickled at my scars, and that look came back into his eyes again.

And he kissed me.

Soft again.

Slow again.

My stomach was burning with it. 

I pressed him down onto the mattress, and instead of looking away like he usually did, he just looked up at me. His green eyes were so bright; there was a burning there that I couldn't understand. 

My fingers dug beneath him again, landed on the scar.

Maybe I could find his resistance like this? I'd wanted Quinn, and this was him, at least a part of him... but it was more than that. He was trying to get more from me than the raider I was, the person I’d always been. I didn’t know how to open up.

"Where did this scar come from?"

He looked at me,  _ really _ looked at me. And then he spoke. 

"When I was in the army as a recruit, I fell in love." He swallowed hard, as though the words were panicking him, making his chest fly apart. He spoke faster, as though that could somehow alleviate the pain. "His name was Silas, and he was  _ the stars. _ " Bright eyes, unshed tears, "And the asshole who was obsessed with him noticed. He beat me, he raped me, and he cut me." And then, a hard swallow. "Silas saved me. It's fucked up, but it's not a scar I regret." 

He was  _ swimming _ in emotions. Suddenly, everything that I'd been trying to pry from him was there at the surface, and I could see it. It made his eyes warm, made his lips fuller. There was an emotion in those depths I'd never seen -- a love that I honestly didn't even believe existed.

But it was there on his face, and he was vulnerable with it. In that moment, I could have broken him -- I could have fucked him senseless until he was screaming my name on the tide _Silas_ that he’d whispered so reverently.

But he was looking  _ at me _ , and I was looking  _ at  _ **_Quinn_ ** . 

I kissed him. Soft.

Slow.

A sweet, languid play at pretending I could be the man that he was seeing behind his eyes.

Just for tonight, though. 

Just for tonight. 

\--- **Quinn**

Salem pulled back from me, and there was a depth in his eyes that I couldn't understand. He spun my body over again, so my stomach was pressed to the bed -- I tensed, ready for him to do what he always did... but instead, I felt his lips brush faintly along the bottom of the scar I'd just told him about.

_ You could always kiss it better. _

My body jolted.

Memories flooded me before I could stop them -- a brief flash of blue eyes. Of pain. Of that pain getting better. 

Of--

"What are you doing?" I croaked the words out, panicked. His hands smoothed along my sides like a balm, and his lips continued to trail up along the length of the scar until I was a shivering puddle of sensation and emotion beneath him. He didn't  _ know _ what he was doing. 

It seemed like he never did -- Salem was a fucking ghost of my past, haunting me in all the hallways. He was Carslile, pinning me down. 

He was Silas, saving me, putting me back together.

He was everything and the nothing inside of me all at once, and it was so much that my head was spinning. That I couldn't figure out how to breathe around it or demand that he stop, fight until I could get that roughness back.

This wasn't it.

He was open, and I was open, and there was no turning back. For the moment, I was lost in it, swept up in a reeling picture of who I used to be and the person that I wasn't anymore.

"Salem..." I croaked his name out finally as he came to the top of the scar, finishing off with a slow swipe of his tongue. He raised up from me, and I rolled over to look at him.

Words burned at the back of my tongue. Thoughts and feelings and emotions that I couldn't understand -- no, I understood them. I just didn't want them. I pushed them down instead and raised my arms up to gently press on his shoulder.

I think to move him off of me.

Instead, he rolled onto his back and pulled me atop him until I straddle his hips. His hands rose slowly, crossing behind his head -- his eyes told me what I think his lips couldn't.

_ Your move. Your control. Go on, Quinn. Take it. _

I wanted to run.

I shifted my hips instead.

It only took a moment to position myself so I could feel the length of him pressing into me... and then just another moment to let myself slowly sink down on that weight and heat, until he filled me and made my heart catch in my throat.

This was different. 

This was... another side to Salem that I hadn't seen. He didn't move until I moved, and his hands only came up to rest on my hips once I leaned forward and put mine on his chest. One clenched into my leg, holding tight but not guiding my motions -- the other moved to my length and started to pump in perfect timing with the roll of my body.

"Salem..." I moaned his name out soft again, but his eyes never left my face; we'd opened our scars to one another... and now this. This was intimate and touching a part of me that I hadn't meant to reveal. And more, the pleasure was already building up so soft and deep that I knew I couldn't turn back now.

We moved to the motion of one another's hearts, faster and faster, until I was panting and sweating above him, and his hand holding me was leaving a semi-circle of nail cuts on my thigh. I fell forward suddenly, pressed my mouth to his, and found myself swallowing down the scream of his orgasm with a hungry tongue and needy lips.

My own came after, hard and fast and taking my breath away until I spilled all that I was out for him -- my pleasure, my pain, my past, and every broken piece of who I was.

I didn't guard any of it tonight, and I knew I couldn't take that moment back.

But for now, his finger ran up and down along the length of my scar.

For now, I didn't want to think.

I rolled to his side and felt him tuck me against his chest... and for just that moment -- even though I knew it was a lie -- I let myself believe it was okay. 


	4. My Whole Existence Is Flawed

**\---Quinn**

I couldn't stay. The knowledge of it burned in my gut and told me that there was only one option for me. The park hadn't even been brought to life; that dream hadn't been made a reality for me... but I'd crossed some line that I hadn't meant to cross, and there was no taking it back.

I was held in the circle of Salem's arm, and he had a piece of me. I  _ cared _ , and I refused to that again. I'd given him  _ Quinn _ , I'd given him  _ Silas' name _ , and I couldn't...

I couldn't.

Tears threatened, but I quickly blinked them back.

_ Don't you cry, you little fucking bitch _ . My father's voice, hot in my head.

_ Quinn, it's okay to _ **_feel_ ** _ sometimes. _ Silas' voice, calm in my soul, and trying to reach me.

_ Broke your new toy, sorry about that.  _ That ugly memory of Carslile. When I'd known for a fact that I wasn't good enough for Silas; not anymore. And I wasn't now. Not for anyone. Broken. Twice. Three times. Four, into a thousand unrecognizable parts that didn't make up the sum of a whole.

_ It's no wonder everyone around you dies.  _ And finally Danse, telling me I was just going to fuck this up, too, if I didn't get out. Now.

I had to get out  _ now. _

It took me a moment to remember who I had been before, the man who could walk among traps and not get caught, who picked locks right underneath the enemy noses and diffused their bombs. I could still find that person, I'd fucking exhumed him from a grave and given Salem a part of him by accident last night.

Because of his damn story.

Because of his damn eyes.

Because there was a person in there who could have been  _ so great _ if another fucking army hadn't taken it all away.

I half thought about taking out the Brotherhood of Steel. Completely. Once and for all.

It was a good thought.

But for now...

I shifted, and he squeezed me tighter. His fingers traced unbidden on the scar that I'd told him about, and he signed softly. Contentedly. Happy. 

I had to bite back the  _ no _ that tried to climb out of my throat, and instead I took a breath, waited a beat, and then moved another inch. It was slow, but after fifteen minutes, I wriggled out from beneath him. I wanted to lean down, to touch his face. To have a goodbye... but there wasn't a point, and I knew that he wouldn’t willingly let me leave.

Instead, I yanked the collar off of my throat and laid it carefully on the bedside table. Picked a pistol and laid it there, too. 

It was raining when I stepped outside of Fizztop Grille, thankfully clean and not a radstorm. The sky seemed to do what I was incapable of doing for myself -- it cried, and it washed away the paint and the last vestiges of what was perhaps my last chance to remember who I'd been.

  
  


**\---Salem**

I knew the instant I woke up that something was wrong. I could sense in the way that the bed beside me was empty. Cold. Quinn hadn't been there for quite some time. I opened my eyes and blinked to my side.

Empty, rumpled sheets.

I glanced towards the open room... but my eyes didn't make it that far. On the table, I saw his collar. On the table, I saw the gun he'd used to take NukaWorld with me.

Fury shot through me, white-hot-vociferous fury. He'd...

Left.

He'd made me  _ feel _ things, and then he'd fucking  _ left. _

Had that been the plan all along? Was the story about his back a lie? 

No. I didn't believe that. I'd opened Quinn up, cracked him from the ribs, and slid my hands along the lines of his heart and soul. And he'd seen me -- not as Salem, but as whoever I might have been if I hadn't been left in the streets. As whoever I could have been if I'd have grown up with anyone other than the raiders.

He'd made me  _ feel _ , and I'd made him  _ remember _ . And apparently, that was more than he was going to take.

I stood in a flurry of motion, snatched the collar so hard in my hand that my knuckles were white. I wasn't going to be left. I wasn't going to be denied.

Quinn wasn't going to fucking do this to me.

I didn't know where he'd gone, but I knew where I could start. Where I'd found him. If he was going to run, it made sense that he'd go back to where his home was. 

I'd kill that tin-can. I'd kill  _ Quinn _ if he fought me, or drag him back kicking and screaming. I was one, trembling line of rage.

And underneath that, I realized why.

I was  _ hurt _ . 

I didn't  _ get hurt _ . At least, not emotionally. But it was there, buried deep in my chest and welling the anger until it was all that I could see. 

"Where are you going, Boss, you can't just--" My fist landed into Gage's face, slamming hard and breaking teeth, cracking a jaw. I didn't have time for his shit. 

I didn't have time for anything except getting to Quinn before he got away.

\---

It only took me a few hours to get from NukaWorld to the rail station, and then from there, I made my way across the Commonwealth. The only comfort that I could take in anything was the fact that he didn't have more than an eight-hour lead on me. I might have been more relieved with that fact if it wasn't  _ Quinn _ . He could tear through the world like lightning, and I wasn't even sure if I was going in the right direction. It was instinct alone that drove me, instinct alone that took me across the Commonwealth and back into the ocean to that damn island.

I swam, and I could almost feel that I was going in the right direction. I swam and when I scrambled up onto the shore; he was there.

Knelt in front of power armor, in front of a house that had been set to flames.

The armor was empty.

Quinn was shaking and holding a piece of twisted metal that looked like it had once been a box.

Whatever he'd been hoping to find here, I had a feeling that this wasn't it. I might have cared, had it not been for the anger bubbling up and boiling over and driving me forward in a run.

"Quinn!" I barked his name, and he turned. My voice was sharp and demanding his attention. He turned, and I saw something on his face I hadn't seen the entire time that I knew him.

A streak of tears along his cheeks. Melted dog tags in his hand with a clump of twisted metal and silver -- rings -- melted into the former square of the tag.

The fire had torched whatever he came back for and melted it all together.

"No." He stood, still gripping that piece of ruined metal. "No!" He screamed the word in my face as I came for him, and this time when he ran at me, it wasn't to embrace me.

He slid to the side at the last moment and caught my leg with his own, sending me spiraling forward with my own unexpected momentum.

He was fighting me.

Quinn was fighting me.

My blood surged. 

"No?" I barked the word out as a laugh, taking a swing at him which he dodged. "No?! You don't get to tell me no, Quinn. You're my bitch, did you forget that? You belong to me." 

"Fuck you!" He snarled the words out again, and this time when he swung at me, it caught me in the stomach. My breath came out in a quick whoosh, but I recovered, picked him up by his throat, and threw him across the clearing, onto the still-warm ash that was all that remained of his house.

"Fuck me? No. You fucked yourself leaving. You don't get--"

"You don't get it, Salem. I'm done!" He pushed himself up from the dirt -- his face was painted again with ash and streaks of tears. "I'm fucking done being  _ Quinn.  _ **_Everything_ ** _ is gone. _ "

He looked at me, hard, hurt, furious. Those melted tags were still in his hands, "He fucking burned it to the ground and left." 

But  **_I_ ** wasn't gone -- I didn't say that stupid shit aloud though. 

"You're coming back with me."

"No, I'm fucking leaving this place. I'm going to Nevada." 

I charged forward again, and his leg snapped out, kicking at me and sending me careening to the side. He sprang up like a wildcat, hands wrapping around my throat from behind, arm latching onto me and legs wrapping around my waist. He buried his head at my neck and held tight "I'm not feeling this anymore."

"You're not going anywhere without me." I growled the words out again, "Me and your fucking collar."

"I'm not getting collared again." He squeezed tight at my throat until stars were bursting behind my eyes. I slammed back against the shattered wooden remains of the framework of his house, and I knew that it stabbed into his body - new scars. He didn't seem to give a shit. "You wanted Quinn, Salem? You want to know the real me. Fine, this is me. I'm a fucking monster and I'm done pretending." 

My eyes flared wide as my legs gave out from the lack of oxygen. He rode me to the ground with his knees behind mine. There was a moment when I wasn't sure if he was going to let my throat go.

But then he did, and I could feel the hot wash of tears spilling from his eyes and onto my back as he suddenly ripped at my clothes. 

I started to push up, and his fist slammed into my back -- he didn't have as much strength as me, but he had a precision that I couldn't deny or ignore and it sent a lancing jolt of pain through my spine. Even in everything that I'd seen of him, he'd never shown me this side. His voice was icy like winter, and I had seen the steel in his eyes. He really thought he was a monster.

His hands stripped the straps from my chest and he jerked at my pants. "Do you wanna be with me, Salem? Do you want  _ Quinn? Fine! Fucking fine."  _ And even then, there was a brief moment of hesitation -- he gave me that chance to move away, because as much of a monster as he thought he was, he wasn't the kind of monster who could take a person against their will. I growled, I bucked, but I didn't move away from him; I moved into him. 

"You don't get to just run away, Quinn." I snarled the words out in anger, and he laughed at me then. Short, sharp. A burst of humor that didn't have a touch of warmth to it.

"You'd rather me run towards you?" His knee dug into my back again, and I felt his tears, his blood dripping on my bared frame.

"I'd rather you put your fucking colla--"

His hand came down, snatching my hair, jerking my head back and forcing me to look into eyes that burned like embers, and realize he'd slipped that melted chunk of metal around his throat where the collar had once rested. 

"No. No more fucking collars." And he paused again for just a moment, our eyes so close together that I could see his burning with the fire that had already gone out at the house and left the ground warm...

And then we were kissing.

I wasn't sure if I'd made a move to roll him off, or if he'd shifted forward to kick one knee into my back and force me down again. Whatever it was, our mouths met, and his entire frame felt hot. He tore at his own clothes, was nude above me before I really realized what was happening.

It was what we always fell into... but this was different. I pressed on the ground, moved to shift upward, and his hand slid around my neck again. Gave a hard squeeze.

"No. Not this time." 

And again, there was another moment where he gave me the chance to say no. I stared at him with wide, shocked eyes. 

This was not a position I belonged in.

This was not a position I  _ ever  _ belonged in. 

And if I moved, I was aware of the fact that I was going to lose him. For good. 

Quinn drove his body down, and his cock was a hard heat against me... and for a moment, my head spun; he radiated strength, and heat, and fury.

And he demanded nothing less than being an equal, or nothing at all.

I kissed him again. 

Quinn moved then, the slick sweat and blood and tears making his body glide against me as he did so. A careful, slow motion that left the breath catching in my chest, left my body tense and shaking, and then trembling for a completely different reason. This was something I had never experienced before; I never lost control.

I never allowed anyone the chance to be on top of me like this -- my mind flashed to the other night, of him riding me. In control without being in control. That had started something, and now...

Here we were, and there he was, and Quinn's hand slipped from around my neck to dig into the ashes beside my own, to interlink our fingers as he finally lowered his full weight atop me and buried his face against the curve of my neck -- there was slick sweat and slick savlia from his other fingers for a moment, and then..

He thrust into me, and he cried and he bled. And the strength that made him move like a creature possessed poured into what he was doing. The hand that held mine shook, pressed hard until a plume of ash rose around us with the motion of his body; he worked slowly at first, diving inside of me in dips of his hips that stole my breath away and made something in my stomach burn and curl. But the more he moved, the more I seemed to burn, to writhe until at last, I couldn't take it anymore. I moved in a quick motion, and he let me; he rolled off of me instantly -- proof, again -- that he wasn't going to just take what he wanted, even if he had acted like he would. He came back to me the instant that my back hit the ground in another puffing flare of ash. Quinn locked our fingers, pressed his forehead to mine, and when he started moving inside of me this time I could see the blood smeared along his skin, the sweat, the remnants of what he had once cared about so much -- the melted, twisted tags swinging around his neck. 

He shifted and angled to enter me again, the length of him sliding home like he belonged there all along. My eyes closed for a brief moment; pleasure flooded me, a sensation that I'd never experienced before, I’d been fucked, but even then I’d been in control of each and every stroke. Not now though -- now it was Quinn, and Quinn… and Quinn. Our bodies were slick and pressed to one another, and the friction of our motions put pressure against my own hardness, made the pleasure that was building up inside of me slowly begin to boil over.

"No more collars." He panted the demand out. "No more weakness." His words were a gasp, his eyes were foxfire, "Just me. Just you. That's all." 

He didn't give me a chance to answer. His mouth found mine again and he kissed me with trembling lips and a tongue that tasted bitter from the tears and the burnt wood in the air -- it was still the sweetest kiss that I'd ever had. Our bodies worked and surged together until the cloud around us was a whipping, whirling thing, until we were both panting, clinging -- until the ask streaked us both gray from the sweat on our bodies...

Until finally, I couldn't hold it anymore. I cried out, my body bucking, my orgasm rolling through me like a tidal wave that left me screaming against his lips, left his fingers clawing across my torso and leaving four ragged stripes that oozed blood as he thrust hard once, twice, three times and then lost himself inside of me.

He worked with a fury until he'd spilled every last drop, extracted every ounce of pleasure from me... and then he collapsed on top of me.

He was panting.

Crying... 

Trembling...

And for the first time, I really felt like  _ Quinn _ was mine.

Or maybe it was the fact that for the first time, I was his, too.

\--- **Quinn**

Everything was broken; Danse had burned it all to the ground, left me with nothing. Even though he didn't know where I kept the tags, I had to believe that he'd done it out of spite. The only reason that I didn't think the Brotherhood had taken him was that I knew for a fact they would have swiped the power armor as well -- nothing left to waste.

I was trembling in a mess of emotions, still laying atop Salem's frame while the cloud of ash settled around us. We were both streaked with it-- remnants of my past. But things were different now; I'd lost something, I'd lost myself... and I knew that there was only one thing that I could do to figure it out.

I had to leave. And for some reason, I wanted Salem with me.

He'd broken me. He'd fucked me and fought me... but through all of that, it had been the pain I'd  _ asked _ for, the pain that I'd _ demanded _ with each defiance, each glance. And...

He'd come after me. To find me. To find  _ Quinn.  _

I wasn't sure what we were now, what we had... but I knew that like the house burned down around me, whatever we were was reborn here in the ash. I finally pushed myself up from him, standing nude and lean and looking for a moment at his broad frame, bare on the ground with oceanic eyes that looked up at me with a bit of confusion and all the strength that had drawn me to him to begin with.

I stuck out my hand to help him up, and he took it.

For a few minutes we stood with our fingers interlocked, and then I finally released him. "I'm going to Nevada," I repeated my words again, carefully. Giving him a chance to say something.

"What's in Nevada?"

"I don't know." I shrugged -- it wasn't really about what was there. It was about what wasn't here. “Something new. Someone new -- a different me." My fingers played at the ash and blood mixture on Salem's chest. He brought his hand to it, smeared it carefully, and I stepped forward. I took his palm carefully in my hands and raised his fingers to my face.

He pressed it there -- the marks -- my marks he'd given me. A small flicker of a smile crossed his lips, and he shifted his hand to press over my mouth. Around my throat, a quick smear across my eyes.

In return, I knelt and grabbed his cargo shorts for him -- they were only a little ripped. Before I handed them to him, I took the collar off of it and stepped over to the melted metal box that had held my past. The patch was long gone, burned in the heat. The photos were melted, black squares where faces used to be.

The only thing that was salvageable at all now swung around my neck. His tags. Our rings. A melted bullet and my broken past. 

I dropped the collar into the box, closed the lid, and knelt to bury it in the ash.

Salem was quiet while I did so, and when I rose and dusted my hands... he was standing behind me with my clothes.

"Vegas is a long way off. We'll probably run into some trouble on the way there." And then, a paused and a thought, "I'll need my missile launcher." 

A slow smile spread across my face -- real, genuine.

He was going to come with me. 

"What about NukaWorld?"

"Eh... fuck NukaWorld." And then a pause, "Actually, Gage is probably planning an uprising right now. I might have broken his jaw when I came after you." 

I laughed then, a soft, clear burst of sound that I hadn't heard in a long time. I felt different -- broken, yes, but free. My fingers briefly touched the swinging metal around my neck -- my past was the only collar that I would wear now. A reminder of who I was, who I couldn't be. 

But who was somehow still a part of me. 

"Let's go then." I headed towards the water and the boat that I had there, with the scent of blood and ash in my nose. 

I wasn't sure how, but I'd found  _ Quinn _ again, or at least started to. The weight of the warm, swinging chain around my neck was an anchor, and the strength of the raider at my side would be the sail so I could actually keep myself this time. 

I would find a way. 

**Author's Note:**

> Fic Playlist:  
> https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4NvsSiJVxg2gxWE11gyTQe?si=KkkjcYn_TnisChcM7r04gA


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